The Eyes Have It

I’ll trade you a Cryptosporidiosis and a Cyclosporiasis for two Ecoli O157:H7 Infections.

The Center for Disease Control is offering 31 disease trading cards. The cards are very nicely designed and laid out. The images are compelling. The only thing I don’t like about them is that there is no way to download all the cards at once. Each individual card is in it’s own PDF file.

If you’re in the Philadelphia area in the next few weeks, it looks like the Dali exhibit isn’t the only reason to stop by the art museum. Through June 26th, there’s also Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera & Books.

“This lively exhibition traces the history of the colorful purveyors of patent and quack medicines over the past four centuries. It contains seventy-five works ranging from humorous caricatures of itinerant quacks, flamboyant advertising posters, and promotional pamphlets for rival panaceas (each supported by extravagant claims of efficacy), to prints that document the first governmental attempts to curtail the more flagrant abuses.“

Some of us from work are going to be there on a “field trip” in early April. I’ll try to post a review if time allows.

“Police in London are trying a new shock tactic in the war on drugs. Images showing the decline of addicts will be shown on posters, bar mats and flyers. This first image shows Roseanne Holland at the age of 29 before her heroin habit took hold.”

“Art images for the cover of Emerging Infectious Diseases are selected for communication effectiveness, audience appeal, artistic quality, stylistic continuity, and technical reproducibility. Art is drawn from many periods (ancient to contemporary) to ‘humanize’ and enhance the scientific content by creating order and harmony, showing chaos, revealing truth, raising consciousness, immortalizing, surprising, fantasizing, illustrating ideas, stimulating the intellect, and firing the emotions. … Emerging Infectious Diseases is not about art. The journal has a cover to protect the scientific content from the elements. But as a communication tool, art seems to work. Our readers enjoy the covers. We don’t know exactly why. But as Georges Braque once said, ‘There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.’”

[Via eyes of the goof]

“Q: Why a comic strip?

A: It was the right medium for the story I wanted to tell. Comic strips meld words and pictures to convey an idea with more economy and grace than either could alone. I was inspired to pursue the idea when I accompanied Mom to chemotherapy one day and did a quick sketch of her napping during the several-hour session. That sketch became ‘Arrangement in Grey and Black’ and encouraged me to give “Mom’s Cancer” a try.”

[via metafilter]

“Posters highlighted on this page were included in ‘HIV/AIDS in Africa’ exhibit at Northwestern University Library. They represent a small sample of posters concerning HIV/AIDS in Africa that are part of the collection at the Herskovits Library.“